Impunity 1959


After such an extended break from blogging, you will be deeply disappointed that I restart with something as mundane and trivial as Jeremy Clarkson. I have defended the man in the past, because I much enjoy Top Gear and consider that much of what he has been criticised for in the past had been an amusing winding-up of the po-faced of the kind I employ myself. But nasty, indeed vicious bullying of a subordinate should always be a sacking offence.

That did not ought to be the question, though. He hit someone and they had to go to hospital. Where are the police? They are incredibly fond of sweeping up scores of teenagers for thought crime, but here we have an actual violent assault that spills blood, and it seems completely out of the question the perpetrator is brought to account. Why is that? I had a personal experience a couple of years ago when I was very mildly hurt – less than young Oisin – in an assault, and the police insisted on arresting the perpetrator despite my repeated requests to them not to do so. They told me rather firmly that the idea that it is the victim who has a say in pressing charges, is a myth. Why was Clarkson not arrested?

I cannot in my mind dissociate this from the non-arrest of Jimmy Savile for his crimes, despite their being well-known and reported at the time. That seems to link in to the wider paedophilia scandal, and the question of why no action was taken even in the most blatant of cases when there was compelling evidence, such as that of the extremely nasty Greville Janner MP.

But then I think still more widely as to why, for example, Jack Straw has not been charged with the crime of misfeasance in public office after boasting of using his position to obtain “under the radar” changes in regulations to benefit commercial clients, in exchange for cash. I wonder why a large number of people did not go to jail for the HSBC tax avoidance schemes or the LIBOR rigging scandal, which involved long term dishonest manipulation by hundreds of very highly paid bankers.

At the top of the tree is of course the question of why Blair has not been charged for the crime of waging illegal war. The Chilcot Inquiry heard evidence that every single one of the FCO’s elite team of Legal Advisers believed that the invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Yet now the media disparage as nutters those who say Blair should be charged.

Then I think of all the poor and desperate people who get jailed for stealing comparatively miniscule amounts in benefit fraud, or the boy who was jailed for stealing a bottle of water in the London riots.

The conclusion is that we do not have a system of justice in this country at all. We have a system where the wealthy and governing classes and those associated with them enjoy almost absolute impunity, broken in only the rarest of cases. At the same time those at the bottom of the pile are kicked hard to keep them there. There is no more chance of justice against those in power in the UK than there is of the killers of Nemtsov being brought to book in Russia.

But what has really scared me is this thought. This situation has been like this my entire life: and I have reached the age of 56 before I realised it. A very great many people have still not realised it at all.

What does not scare me is this. I realise that if the system of justice is completely corrupted, then there is no obligation on me to follow the laws of the state. In fact it would be wrong of me to do so. I must seek my ethical compass elsewhere than in the corrupt power structure which weighs so hard upon the people.


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1,959 thoughts on “Impunity

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  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    I remember an Anon who challenged me about Scotland being hit by a volcanic eruption on Iceland during the referendum on its independence,

    He didn’t accept my response, and disappeared for awhile.

    This site is just plagued with trolls, covert spooks, and depressed sociopaths.

  • Courtenay Barnett

    Macky,
    Thank you for this link:-
    http://www.unz.com/akarlin/the-moor-has-done-his-duty/
    Where it was written:-
    “The Moor has done his duty, the Moor can go. In the big scheme of things, it is just a minor iteration of what happened to Solzhenitsyn after he rejected neoliberal capitalism, or Gorbachev after he came out in support of Russia’s incorporation of Crimea. It’s either their way, all the way, or the highway.”
    It comes to mind that this man may be a sort of Russian version of a John Pilger.
    In reading the thoughts of many Western liberals, I sum their views up in this way:-
    1. Food, shelter and clothing as “survival rights”; or
    2. The liberties of freedom of speech and expression and the like as “civil liberties”; or
    3. If creative enough – a judicious blend of 1 and 2 to ensure that 1 is attained.
    The cozy position of the West is that it had been slave owners, capturers of lands far and wide, colonialists, imperialists, theoreticians of the highest order funded ( as from Caribbean slavery earnings – just trace UK PM Cameron’s direct plantation lineage and wealth base back to the Barbados plantation) – and so we (in the West) conveniently, but with intellectual laxness, jump to 2 before we have of necessity primarily focused on and grappling with 1 as a fundamental necessity if those living are to survive to advance for enjoyment at 2.
    To grasp some of what I am alluding to –then – give careful consideration to and study of :-
    A. Cuba pre and post the 1959 revolution.
    B. The autocratic strategy towards development that was adopted by Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore; and
    C. The official human indices measures and statistics for Libya pre and post Gadaffi in Libya.
    Anyone who has ventured into any Third World country and witnessed the poverty in its extreme, will, if intellectually honest, laugh to scorn and ridicule much of the professed Western concerns about building “democracy” accompanied by “human rights”. No – democratic if we ( the West) approve of the elected leader and human rights if on the one hand you are not a Syria independent of Western subservience in Syria under Assad, but the Saudi Arabian regime under uncondemned hand and head choppers as lawful punishment are embraced by the West. Such hypocrites. Watch – so that some important global points of reference can be better grasped:-
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsB07CcSNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsB07CcSNwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVsB07CcSNw
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ioJGMCr-Y
    What credibility when the 1967 Israel/Palestinian borders are crossed and expanded on with impunity; what credibility pre-1967 as regards Western protection of human rights and justice for all?
    Nuff said.
    CB

  • Macky

    And that folks, is the power, or better still, the magic of Mary !

    She draws out Pro-Zionists trolls like moths to a flame; first we had Habby cut short his just announced promised break, and now here’s Anon !

    Speaking of which;

    Lying Propagandist. Tick
    Apologist for Israeli crimes. Tick.
    Islamophobe. Tick.

    Yes, it’s all there, the complete Hasbara hat-trick.

  • Courtenay Barnett

    Macky,

    What did I just question:-

    ” What credibility when the 1967 Israel/Palestinian borders are crossed and expanded on with impunity; what credibility pre-1967 as regards Western protection of human rights and justice for all?”

    See above.

  • Dreoilin

    “Isn’t my racism, Dreolin. It’s what the NTSB called them officially shortly after it happened.”

    The NTSB was taken in by some American “jokers” who labelled them ‘Ho Lee Fuk’ and ‘We Too low’ because they were Korean. It was all over the internet at the time. The NTSB was promptly corrected (and corrected their error), but you prefer the joke names, it seems. I do not post lies.

    Their real names are Captain Lee Jung Min and Captain Lee Kang Guk.

    “NTSB use of social media

    “Shortly after the accident, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) used Twitter and YouTube to inform the public about the investigation and quickly publish quotes from press conferences. NTSB first tweeted about Asiana 214 less than one hour after the crash. One hour after that, the NTSB announced via Twitter that officials would hold a press conference at Reagan Airport Hangar 6 before departing for San Francisco. Less than 12 hours after the crash, the NTSB released a photo showing investigators conducting their first site assessment.[105] On June 24, 2014, the NTSB published to YouTube a narrated accident sequence animation.[106]”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214

    If the NTSB had slowed down a small bit, they would not have made schoolboy errors with pilots names. And if they had a couple more brain cells, they would never have accepted those obvious racist names as being correct.

  • Dreoilin

    “Wonder which member of the troll brigade writes in as Anon in support of Israhell? Must be one of the old vintage to know that Ba’al was Komodo in a previous existence.”

    No, that doesn’t follow. Ba’al is still sometimes referred to as Komodo (or Ba’al/Komodo) by some posters here.

  • Mary

    Will anyone be watching Cameron and Miliband on CH 4 at 9pm tonight

    or

    Question Time on BBC1 tonight at 10.45 with Nicky Morgan (who?), Jim Murphy, Leanne Wood, Steven Woolfe and Janet Street-Porter?

    Probably not. Some scraping of barrels methinks.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    I was using their joke names as illustrations of authorities fabrications to explain away recent man-made deliberate ma disasters.

    And your post lied about me as I an not a racist about any Asians.

    In fact, I am not a racist about anyone. Most taken by the simply fact that none of us chose to be here.

  • Macky

    @John Goss; good article, well written & worth reading.

    @ Courtenay Barnett, only embarrassing fools with child-like gullibility, or liars with nefarious agendas, state that they believe the absurd slogans of “Spreading Democracy – Bringing Freedom”; the West has been at war with the developing Third World, not just for decades, but for centuries. More accurately, the never ending war has been orchestrated by those at the top of certain Westerner countries, who much prefer to enrich themselves even more, by looting rather than trading. If it means death & destruction for the locals, even better, just clears the decks & any potential opposition; if it means death & miserly for your own lower classes, never mind, they’ll still do their patriotic duty/King & Country, hoping for a few dribble down rewards.

    “Western protection of human rights and justice for all?” Empty slogan for an abstract notion that only exists as a lie.

  • Dreoilin

    “And your post lied about me as I an not a racist about any Asians.”

    You mean you’re too dumb to recognise racist “joke” names? I didn’t lie about you. You were the one who posted them.

    And actually it wasn’t the NTSB – it was a Fox affiliate. And the Fox affiliate claimed that the NTSB verified the names. Something they denied.

    You can read about it all here

    http://www.dailydot.com/news/ktvu-racist-gaffe-apology/

  • Anon

    Actually I was around long before Komodo became a twat, and that was long before he changed his name. It was about the same time Craig voted LibDem so I’m showing my age here. It was when Saint Suhayl was worshipped. Jon the Mod reigned. The blog nodded and agreed.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    I recognized the insulting racist names from the outset which were intended to make the pilots look incompetent – what they were ultimately said to be.

    And what the Fox affiliate broadcast came conveniently from a NTSB intern.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    John Goss
    26/03/2015
    4:19 pm

    Thank you for posting your article, John. It’s well presented and gives sobering food for thought.

    I will not pretend that I am an expert in geopolitics, and I don’t really feel qualified to assess it. But I can use it to try and start to get a handle on this stuff.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Miss Castello

    Anon@ 5.56 pm;

    So which part of ‘Noisy Tappets’ post (5.27 pm) was incorrect?

  • Dreoilin

    “And what the Fox affiliate broadcast came conveniently from a NTSB intern.”

    The NTSB denied that it did. That was just the Fox affiliate trying to cover itself, given that it was by then a laughing stock.

    The stupid woman actually read out the names

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C76T9_fThH0

  • Peacewisher

    @John: I agree entirely about the inappropriateness of the way “The West” has dealt with Putin.

    Here is the latest example:

    The US House of Representatives Openly Calls for Regime Change in Moscow
    http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/25/4939

    And that includes taking [back?] Crimea…

    However foolish Cameron may be, he pales into insignificance compared to these dangerous fools.

  • Dreoilin

    “However foolish Cameron may be, he pales into insignificance compared to these dangerous fools.”

    I couldn’t agree more, Peacewisher. Although I can’t look at Cameron without feeling slightly ill.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    The NTSB denied that it had informed the affiliate of the racist names of the pilot after it had conveniently fired its intern who had said so.

    You are just acting as if the station would have the hutzpah to so claim.

  • noisy tappet

    You’re right, Anon. I can barely bring myself to use the word ‘Israel’ for the simple reason that no-one knows where Israel starts and finishes. They make it up as they go along.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Dreolin
    26/03/2015 7:51 pm

    “And actually it wasn’t the NTSB – it was a Fox affiliate. And the Fox affiliate claimed that the NTSB verified the names. Something they denied.

    You can read about it all here

    http://www.dailydot.com/news/ktvu-racist-gaffe-apology/

    Your link says that the NTSB later corrected itself, stating that someone at their organization did, in fact, confirm the names to the affiliate – a “summer intern” acting “outside the scope of their authority”.

    SNAFU all round.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Thanks, Lysias.

    My how times have changed in just a few short years!

    Now a French prosector goes bananas about another man-made disaster, and it is taken by the world as the gospel truth in just a matter of hours.

  • John Spencer-Davis

    Trowbridge H. Ford
    26/03/2015 8:56 pm

    Prosecutor not prosector!

    A prosector has a much more grisly profession than a prosecutor(shudder).

    Kind regards,

    John

  • lysias

    A prosector has a much more grisly profession than a prosecutor(shudder).

    Well, I guess it’s debatable which of the two professions is grislier.

    I would say Villefort in The Count of Monte Cristo, for example, was grislier than most any prosector.

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